Porch Swing Sandwiches

Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: Happy Home

HAPPY HOME- Tell a story about a happy memory from a home in your family from your childhood or your family history.

Genealogy Matters Storyteller Tuesday Challenge: HAPPY HOME

When I was a kid, I spent some time in the summer with my great Aunt Irma. She lived in a turn of the century house on a short street in a quiet town in southern Illinois. Her screened-in porch was kitted out with one of those monstrously heavy wooden porch swings suspended from the wood slat ceiling by thick chains. Homemade cushions padded the seat.

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On a summer day, I’d sit next to Irma and swing, unhurriedly experiencing the day. There was no need to talk. Nothing to be done anytime soon. It was hot, but there was a puff of a breeze now and then. Sounds were hushed: a gentle clink of the chains and creak of the wood as the swing moved, distant laughter, a car passing unseen on the main road, an occasional pedestrian who waved and nodded.

Irma, from whom I inherited some of my thrifty tendencies, knew how to make food go a long way. When it was lunch time, she’d go inside and return with a plate of mashed potato sandwiches, lemonade for me, and tea in her teacup that was the size of a cereal bowl. For the sandwiches, she cut bread slices into rounds with a big biscuit cutter (the remnants went into bread pudding), buttered the slices, spread with leftover buttery mashed potatoes, and topped with another slice. Then she’d lightly roll the edge in salt, maybe with some chopped parsley if she had it. They were delicious. While these sandwiches were a frugal answer to lunch, I felt like I was a guest at a tea party.

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